Hilton Head Island: Steve Earley and the MONITOR; a gift from Canada; discarded; resumed

I have been remiss.  Not for the first time and surely not for the last.  But I failed to mention that Steve Earley is on his fall cruise.  A possible excuse is that he began a week ago when I was distracted by being chopped.  A more likely reason is that I am old and getting forgetful.   A third is that with his summer cruise this year in Maine and his recent winter cruises in southern waters, added to his long time spring and fall cruises, are all melding together and Steve is almost on a continuous cruise.  A very good way to live.

Here is the link to his tracking page:

https://maps.findmespot.com/s/92QF#history/assets

And here is the link to his site:

http://logofspartina.blogspot.com/

The above photo is one Steve just posted there.

But Steve also has the good taste to read my journal and the entry about the MONITOR caused him to write:

I am enjoying the morning. Sitting under the boom tent during a light rain at Solomons Island.  I decided to wait out today’s wind and rain with a better forecast for tomorrow.  Weather says something call the “sun” may make an appearance tomorrow.  I wonder if I will know it when I see it. 

Reading your most recent journal entry brought back memories of recovering the turret of the USS Monitor.  It was an honor, as the son of a Naval officer, to see it raised.  The first person to touch the turret once on the barge deck was a historian, the second was me.  

And he provided a link to a piece he wrote about this a dozen years ago that I find of interest:

http://logofspartina.blogspot.com/2011/07/little-history.html

Paradise has been re-established, though that might be a contradiction in terms.  Paradise should just be paradise.  But as I have noted here before, paradise is usually somewhere else.

This condo looks out on and is in immediate proximity to beauty, but is dangerously hot in the summer.  That that beauty is different from any I have known is one of its attractions.  Live oaks.  Spanish moss.  Palmetto palms.  Spartina.  Skull Creek.

Summer is over.  Temperatures have moderated.  I can go outside in the middle of the day without risking heat stroke, and I have breakfast on the screened porch and drinks in the evening there or on the deck.  

For several days the weather has been perfect.  Sunny.  Blue sky.  Some breeze.  But a few hours ago when I went onto the porch with a gin and tonic, the sky had hazed over, turning Skull Creek silver.  From the Savannah evening news I learned that the haze is smoke from a wildfire in Ontario, carried out to sea and south to here.  That’s a long way.  Canada is big and mostly empty and burning down.

Last week I watched THE PACIFIC on Netflix.  THE PACIFIC is a spin off of THE BAND OF BROTHERS, following a squad of Marines as they fight from island to island in that ocean, as THE BAND OF BROTHERS follows paratroopers fighting in Europe.  Both series are well done.

I found myself thinking about how much I and we read and watch about war, which after sex may be the most fundamental human activity.  

It has been a long time since we have had a major war.  Since I was a very young child.  I see no evidence whatsoever that we have gained in wisdom.  Is it possible that we will get through this century without another cataclysmic great war?

In one of the final episodes of THE PACIFIC there is an amusing almost unnoticeable scene.  

At a camp on one of the Pacific islands a marine walks past carrying a book which he tosses into a trash barrel.  Another marine who has seen him wonders what he has thrown away and goes over to the barrel, reaches down, pulls out the book.  We only see a title:  WAR STORIES, and the author’s last name:   Hemingway.  The second marine drops the book back in the trash barrel.

My interpretation of this is that the marines who have lived the brutal reality of war are disgusted with Hemingway’s romanticism of it.  And the scrip writers who agree indulge themselves with this transitory dig.

I resumed workouts today.  The knee bends put a little stress on my incision, so I did not go down quite as far as I usually do.  I don’t really like to workout; but my aged body doesn’t like it when I can’t.